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The Psychometrics of Sustainability - John Marshall Roberts

What if you could understand, really understand your customers? What if you could finally transcend demographic profiles and grasp the very core of their worldview: the key metaphors they use to make sense of the world, their level of social optimism, the values lenses that they both love and despise, and their secret mental models for aspiration and growth? Imagine what might then be possible for the vitality and market penetration of your brand? John Marshall Roberts discusses the results of audience research he had conducted: the various individual and combined worldviews, including Indigo (holistic), Gold (systems), Jade (humanistic), Copper (individualistic), and Navy (absolutistic). Secondly, he provides sound guidance on leadership and interpersonal communication, and gives the best angle for messaging social responsibility for the four most common worldviews. After all, applying a universal "care for the planet" message will resonate highest with humanistic thinkers, but will leave many other people uninterested. Dynamically communicating the benefits and values of sustainability and environmentalism to meet the diverse worldviews of people, is what is needed to make the movement gain traction and greater acceptance.

The Psychometrics of Sustainability - John Marshall Roberts

1.
The Psychometrics
of Sustainability
John Marshall Roberts
Worldview Learning

2.
A SIMPLE TRUTH
To make the sustainability movement gain
traction through our brands, we must have a
much deeper and more radical grasp of the
psychology of human communication than
ever before in the history of human thinking.

3.
What is a Worldview?
A specific habitual way of looking at the world
which drives day-to-day behavior, and
dramatically influences how a person makes
sense of communications.

4.
Roberts Worldview Assessment (RWA)
A valid and reliable
psychometric tool
that measures
worldviews and
gives social
innovators
actionable insights
in order to shift
thinking and inspire
behavior change in
mainstream
audiences

5.
What does the RWA measure?
3 INGREDIENTS OF A WORLDVIEW
+ +
Values Filtering Social
Lens Style Optimism

8.
RWA
Worldview
Results
You are most likely sensitive to: You are most likely to respond to messages that:
• vision, innovation and creativity • inspire creative thinking and fresh insight
• opportunities to experience meaning • create a sense of warmth and human
and community connection
• selfish or manipulative motives in others • seem genuine and open hearted
• stale or outdated ways of thinking that • balance practicality with a larger,
lack insight planetary perspective

10.
RWA
Worldview
Results
BAD-FIT LEADERSHIP TYPE:
Your most challenging leadership figure is likely to:
• see the social world through an absolutistic, all or nothing lens
• speak in crude, polarizing terms about topics that you feel need a more sophisticated analysis
• require absolute acceptance of only true authority in relation to a chosen issue or topic
• favor emotion over reason and debate when making decisions

11.
Psychologically speaking, the global sustainability
groundswell is the result of mass emergence of
the GOLD values-lens

12.
What are your thoughts
on the environmental crisis?
Navy - Absolutistic Values Copper - Individualistic Values
“What good is a green
“I am not convinced world if we don’t have
there is a problem. jobs? Green legislation
It’s arrogant it is to is code for increasing
think that we could taxes, and raising
change the climate.” energy costs for
consumers.”
Jade - Humanistic Values Gold - Systemic Values
“Earth is a fragile “We need to reframe,
system which is re-imagine, and
collapsing due to
redesign all of our
corporate greed. We
systems leveraging the
need to protect the
environment and way nature works to
punish those create a integrated,
responsible.” sustainable world.”

13.
Generic best angle for messaging
social responsibility?
Navy - Absolutistic Values Copper - Individualistic Values
Focus on purpose. Focus on profit.
family, morality Frame in terms of
and doing the right personal gain –avoid
thing. Build in a overt appeals to
sense of altruism and focus on
nationalism and bottom-line
tradition. outcomes.
Jade – Humanistic Values Gold – Systemic Values
Focus on people. Focus on balance
Show how your between profit, people
product or service is and purpose.
rooted in human Demonstrate
values and can help planetary perspective
build community. with pragmatic results-
focus.

14.
RWA
Worldview
Results
SOCIAL OPTIMISM – sample item “The human spirit always overcomes
adversity”
High scorers on this scale tend to have great confidence in mankind’s ability
to solve complex political, economic and environmental problems. Low
scorers generally feel that it’s too late or that these problems are too big.
Your level of social optimism was measured and compared group norms. A
brief description of each scale is given below.
YOUR RESULTS: MEDIUM SOCIAL OPTIMISM – THE PRAGMATIC IDEALIST
Results indicate that you demonstrate a moderate level of social optimism. As such, you are helpful, but not
easily persuaded that our world’s toughest problems can be solved through human inspiration and ingenuity.
You are likely to see such problems as somewhat intractable, but are still hopeful that they can be effectively
resolved. You are likely to have mixed feelings towards communications that call upon the altruistic side of
human nature – sometimes they inspire you, other times they seem foolish or out of touch with reality. Your
attitude can best be described as that of a ‘pragmatic idealist.’

15.
RWA
Worldview
Results
Filtering Style refers to a person’s general cognitive style for filtering communications.
Pragmatic Filterers focus primarily on the personal relevance of communications they encounter – how
new information can help them achieve personally important goals.
Authenticity Filters focus primarily on the truth and beauty of communications they encounter – the
apparent level of honesty, positivity and warmth of both the message and sender.
Balanced filterers have no clear preference, and often use both styles equally as the situation dictates.
Your filtering style was measured and the results are delivered below.

16.
The moral of the story?
1. You have a uniquely systemic and planetary worldview
compared to 90% of the US population
2. To maximize the effectiveness of future communications
with cynical or apathetic mainstream audiences
• Be aware of navy-absolutistic blind-spots
• Frame messages to match audiences values and social
optimism
• Adapt message sequencing to audience filtering style